New Volunteers Have Arrived

Two Norwegian boys were supposed to arrive on the morning of Diwali, i.e. Saturday, 17^th of October. Friday, when we decide to go to Valentino’s to have a nice meal, Fiona gets a phone call from Aslak (from AC UWC) saying him and Alf (his Norwegian friend) are 3 hours away from Kullu. We’re then informed of their means of transportation which was that they got a ride from some nice people, and that they had been in the car for 12 hours already. With a car it should take approximately 9 hours from New Delhi to Kullu; so we get slightly worried thinking they are being kidnapped or something.

We call Ankit who says it should be okay, so we get curious to see if they’ll actually arrive in Kullu that night or not. Amazing how much drama the imagination of young minds can create. However, around 4 later I get a phone call from the boys saying they are in Kullu and need to know exactly where in Kullu they should go to come to Ankit’s. 15 minutes later we are all sitting outside Ankit’s house enjoying a bottle of wine. Aslak brought his guitar; we have already used it a lot at the blind school and the Bashing Orphanage.

On Saturday we celebrated Diwali, but I will post a separate blog about that. On Sunday, though, Fiona, Kitty, Eloise, Alf, Aslak and I went to Bashing so that Aslak and Alf could get a feel of the place as we will be very much involved there in the future. We had warned them that they children were quite loud and wild, but when we got there this was not the case. I don’t know if it was because the boys were there, or if the boy who ran around the most was sleeping; but we had quite the efficient sessions compared to last time.

Alf and I brought the youngest ones upstairs to practice some basic English. We had flash cards with different animals for the boys to learn. It was really fun, because one boy worked really hard and was so happy when he managed to remember the correct word. He also inspired another boy to try harder. The third one is more intelligent, so he would play at the same time as he was participating.

On Tuesday we all went to Kelheli (I think I finally found the correct spelling because this is how it said on a shop sign in Kelheli). We had bought a bed sheet and brought along some paint for the boys (remember how Kelheli is the orphanage with only boys?) to work with. We all made a twister game together with red, blue, green and yellow spots on the bed sheet. It was fun making it with them. We also did some skipping rope games. I think the Norwegian boys made an impact on the boys from the orphanage because there haven’t been any boys there for some years. This means that most of the boys staying there now haven’t had the experience of getting a visit from boy volunteers.